Irrevocable
by KatxValentine
Summary: As far as Ivy was concerned, once was too much. Getting rid of Harley Quinn and the feelings she came with felt impossible. A series of encounters and a number of lessons not learned.
1. Fool

I don't own Harley Quinn, nor do I own Poison Ivy. But after much character-searching and intrigued assessment, I've come to realize how much I love the pairing. Hell, it's made me _like_ Harley Quinn, and I thought that was impossible! Anyway, I've come to love Harley/Ivy way too much and…well, here's my first piece on that subject matter. Enjoy!

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She's a fool.

It's the only thought in Ivy's head, the single, lonely concept. Harley Quinn is a damn fool, an idiot, someone so enraptured by infatuation that life and pain pass her by in a blur.

The all-too-infamous Poison Ivy, is level-headed. She's grounded, passive, and casual. She understands things beyond Harley's comprehension. Her only downfall is passion, and passion applies itself in many places. One of those places is the way her long fingers brush (kindly, gently, always softly) against Harley's pale, bruised skin. It's always so toned, she notes, taut beneath her touch. It's skin, she feels, that doesn't deserve such abuse.

Ivy is different. Ivy would never put up with the things her beloved 'Mistah J' does to Harley. Ivy always lectures Harley ("Like uh professuh," Harley says, in that way that makes Ivy think she should be popping gum) about the importance of equality and—no, not even, how much more Harley means than the stupid clown. "Mistah J," she always defends, always swift, her crystal-clear eyes puppy-dog sad, "Mistah J's just gotta bad tempuh. He'll come 'round, you'll see, Red, you'll see."

Ivy is still waiting for the day someone sees, but she hopes that someone isn't her. It'd be nice, she always thinks, with a tinge of bitter sarcasm, if blind Harley would see.

Ivy just takes her in, feeling masochistic and sluggish at whatever moment Harley enters. When the clown rejects her, Ivy does the same job she does for her lovelies. She tends to Harley until Harley can bloom, flourish. She softens her, proves all the sweetness in the entire world. She prepares her and, inevitably, when the process is done and she's cultivated a beautiful flower, Harley leaves to repeat the process again. New bruises, new cuts will form where the old ones abandon. They'll taint Harley's pretty skin with un-pretty shades of mauve.

"These roses are real pretty, Red." The blonde splays across her couch, the couch Ivy lets her claim for her own, and touches reverently at the deep red petal. Ivy's always pleased with that, it always makes her smile. Harley is, she swears sometimes, more attentive than she knows.

"Carrousel Grandiflora," Ivy says, and looks up briefly from her book to answer, "They're meant to be proud."

Ivy's ability to notice the sudden proximity of the blonde is incomprehensible, but Harley always sneaks up on her in more ways than one. There's a goofy grin plastered to her face, and Ivy knows she's waiting, anxious like a child on Christmas morning, for her attention. She just keeps reading, turns a page, and memorizes the slightly impatient twitch in Harley's breath.

"Like you, Red?" And the rose slips behind her ear, careful, soft. When she finally ventures a full glance up, her green eyes clash with diamond-clear-blue and for a minute her breath doesn't come just right. But Harley's sitting comfortably on the armrest of her favorite chair, her legs crossed one over the other, one hand still touching just behind Ivy's ear.

Pamela Isley takes Harleen Quinzell's hand in her own and brushes a thumb reverently over her knuckles, mapping out purple and red bruises, studying them with only a touch. Harley flinches, but it's only enough to shake her body just plainly that Ivy withdraws her touch and there they are, Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy and it's all once more with feeling.

"I suppose," Ivy murmurs, shy all at once. Harley is like a puppy who's just learned a game of fetch. She's eager to please, always jumping for that excitement, always willing to catch the thrown Frisbee. Ivy doesn't want to throw the Frisbee anymore than, she believes, deep down Harley wants to catch it. Ivy desperately wants to know why Harley needs to exist like a parasite with a reverse reaction; like a being who takes in the nutrients from another being but doesn't gain anything for herself.

"Think Mistah J would like one'uh these, Red?" She toys with the petals of the rose again, stroking at it, playing with it still settled behind Ivy's ear. The red-head rests her book face-down in her lap and rests her hands palm-down at her thighs. The breath she inhales is draconic, intense, a flare of the nostrils. She almost realizes how irritated it makes her, the fact that Harley uses that nickname for her so often, like they're old friends, like she has the nerve to think them _lovers._

"No, Harley."

Ivy decides something with the simplest feeling.

Monsters shouldn't have beautiful things.


	2. Rudolph

Ivy decides, as she opens the door after the pitiful knock, that letting Harley in is exactly the same as letting a stray in out of the cold. She's fed the stray once, and now the stray won't ever leave. She's just as familiar with animal habits as she is with plant ones.

When Harley's glittering blue eye (the right is swollen shut beyond recognition, Harley will explain it to be the result of a jack-in-the-box boxing glove) meets with Ivy's pair of furious emeralds, she just cracks a timid, wavering smile and squeaks out, "Hiya, Red."

Ivy notes the way the edges of Harley's mouth twitch, like there are little hooks attached to wires that tug them. She's familiar with this stage. This is Harley Quinn's I'm-not-upset stage, which will lead into Harley Quinn's I'm-not-hysterical stage.

And Ivy wonders why she's not yet canonized with how idly she's forced to stand by.

Gotham is chilly in the wintertime. It snows often and in sheets of white so thick they glitter. The snow is the last thing incorruptible left in Gotham.

Ivy reaches gently for Harley's wrist (swollen, she notes, and wreathed in dusty purple bruises. All these things anger Ivy) and leads her inside without a sound, setting her on the couch softly as she murmurs, "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is on."

Harley's lip is split at the right side and it trickles dribbles of drying, crimson blood. She pulls the hat (the hat, the _damn_ hat, how Ivy _hates_ that hat) from her head and her damp but still damn-wow-blonde pigtails are peppered with the wet of little snowflakes that seeped through to those strands. How long had she been standing out there?

Ivy flicks the television on, and Harley's mouth explodes into a complete grin. The little reindeer ("If I were the all the other reindeer, I would make fun of him, too," Ivy always finds herself saying, "What kind of male reindeer _sounds_ like that?") prances around next to the unhappy elf on the island of complete rejects, and Harley loves every moment of it.

Harley's head cocks to the side. She angles herself to see through the good eye, still smiling from ear to ear, ignoring with utter apathy the pain in her lip. "M'favorite's King Moonrace-uh. Big, cute lion-goi."

The word 'guy' is left butchered and unpronounced, and Harley's elbow drops to the arm of the couch as her palm leans at her cheek. Ivy notes this, despite the varying shades of black and magenta that adorn her flesh, and admires the clown in the afterglow of Christmas-flavored television.

"You _would_ love the hybrid-freak." Is all Ivy says. Before she stalks into the kitchen to put on a pot of tea for them both, she touches affectionately at Harley's shoulder. Ivy's always touching, that's what most notice, like trying to get someone's attention, like trying to connect.

It's only ten minutes when the tea-whistle drowns out Harley's quiet, shaky sounds of discomposure. They're hardly noticeable at first, like the weak sounds of a week old puppy, but then they grow into small hiccups. The small hiccups grow into bigger ones. Ivy thinks, a lot of the time, that Harley would have a genius career on a children's television show. She can imitate every meek, sad animal that toddlers absolutely adore.

She settles down the cup of tea at the table (four sugar cubes. Talented Harley can taste the difference, otherwise) but the minute she settles on the couch, a set of lithe, skilled arms wrap around her waist and sweet, little Harley nudges her head into Ivy's shoulder like a needy cat.

Quinn, Ivy thinks, you're impossible.

"Oh, _Red,_" the blonde croaks. Her voice cracks and the octave dies, and she locks eyes with Ivy. A hand just entwines in her near-platinum hair and thus, no more is said.

As the clown starts to fall away to the sounds of Ivy's heart-beat, the only thing audible in the background is, "Bumbles bounce!"

Ivy scoffs, wonders why she puts up with this, and mutes the volume.


	3. Addiction

She hates the way Harley sleeps, Ivy knows, because it makes her heart pang in the most unpleasant ways. Harley Quinn, who tucks into herself like a purring cat as she naps, who looks so comfortable and perfect pressed against the warm skin of Ivy's body. Ivy doesn't mind it, but at the same time it grates at her resolve.

Resolve, she thinks, so sarcastically, isn't true at all.

A resolve can only exist if one is willing to front it, right?

Harley absently gurgles out a few noises as Ivy strokes through her pretty, yellow hair. Ivy doesn't understand how stupid Harley can act, when there's someone so amazing underneath that skin-tight clown suit and embarrassing headwear. Ivy loves Harley more deeply than Harley's seventh-grade mind can understand.

No, Harley's not dumb, far from it, but Ivy will swear on her own plants that Harley has the mental social standing of a thirteen year old.

Harley sleeps and Ivy thinks. Harleen and Pamela exist again, and Pamela just stares down at Harleen whose vice-grip never loosens at her solid waist. Harleen is needy, Pamela learns early on, sort of like a newborn puppy or an eight year old girl.

"Red?"

Ivy glances up from a reverie, a dream disappearing into the air, and the TV's dull cable box blinks _12:30_ in crimson lettering. Harleen disappears in the relentless glimpse of that powder-blue eye.

Harley pushes herself up a little closer until her chin tucks in the juncture between Ivy's shoulder and neck, and her lips still smeared with that tasteless black lipstick and that tasteful feel of Harley, she brushes them gently against Ivy's redder ones. Ivy doesn't move, just lets the other get comfortable, cozy.

Inwardly, Ivy swears Harley off for the final time. Like a bad drug addiction: gone.

Harley nuzzles into Ivy's neck and Ivy just scowls and keeps the tips of her fingers eloquently pressed to the corner of her lips. She's not blushing, she knows, but a part of her feels like the most grandiose form of idiot known to all of mankind.

"Love ya, Red."

The murmur is practically indiscernible, but Ivy's known for her ability to discern.

So Ivy melts and tilts her chin up briefly, letting her fingers flutter there with a pleasant sensation. She steadily lets a hand linger to the back of Harley's neck, and she kisses her softly and swears her off mentally for the _last time, she promises._

"Love you too, Harl."

And thus, no more is said.


End file.
